Post-op report

This picture is not of my teeth. Dr Oral Surgeon said they didn't keep mine. I suspect this is because they had to obliterate them into tiny pieces to get them out. Anyway, see the top right-hand one with the wiggly root? Imagine it with four wiggly and long roots, each wiggling in a different direction. That was my teeth. I feel quite proud of my singularly wiggly wisdom teeth roots. Indeed, Dr Oral Surgeon said they had never seen such wiggly ones.

So now I am wisdom toothless, dentally regressed back to adolescence. Thank heavens that's only a sort of figurative state, as it were. Imagine having to be a teenager again??!! Ugh. Everyone was extremely kind, even the anaesthetic nurse who stabbed me repeatedly with the needley things, and had the temerity to say she couldn't get the cannula in because of *my* wiggly veins (I dunno, wiggly teeth, wiggly veins ... should I rename the blog "attentionallwiggles"?).

Hubby goes on 20 March for the same torture. I really hope he doesn't feel as bad as I did post-op. I cried in recovery. All I could say was "mal" (sore). They said "how sore, on a scale of 1 to 10" and I held both hands up. I'm a baby. If I could have articulated more than one word, I would probably have asked for me Mum. So, they pumped me full of some nice drugs that made me feel sleepy and dribble, which was very pleasant in a strange sort of way.

And can I just say, based purely on our experience of French healthcare (and I hope none of you ever find yourselves in a situation where you need to choose), better to be in a private clinic than a public hospital because it's cleaner. Everything was clean. When Hubby was in a public hospital last year with his ankle, it was pretty grotty actually. The staff were very kind and competent, but it was dirty. And they were chronically short-staffed. The poor nurses were desperately over-stretched. Not in the private clinic. But that's one person's experience and cannot be generalised, I hasten to add.

And as for the tube in my nose, I have no recollection of that at all! I think I wasn't really all that conscious when I first came round. And that will make sense to anyone whose brain works like what mine does.

Thank you everyone for your kind comments. I much appreciate your indulgence of my scaredy cat-ness!! And I hope your wisdom teeth aren't wiggly xx

Sleepy

Had my pre-op appointment with the anaesthetist this morning. He was a very pleasant chap. He has scared the living daylights out of me. I've already started having odd wisdom-tooth-extraction-related dreams. Like the one where I got lost in the clinic and they had to send out a search party for me. With sniffer dogs and a helicopter (yes, really). And I had earplugs in. And if I removed them, my mouth bled. And other strange happenings I'll keep to myself.

I'm sure that all the detailed explanations of what will happen and when are supposed to reassure me. Probably some tiny, logical part of my mind is reassured. But right now the vastly bigger and hugely less logical part of me is terrified.

Is it too late to change my mind and have them out under local, 2 at a time? But that'll hurt too. And I'll be able to hear it. No, all 4 at once is better. Apart from the anaesthetic bit. And the bleeding bit. And the tube in my nose bit. Why do I need I tube in my nose?

I know, I am the most pathetic example of a thirty year old ever to walk the earth.

Will it hurt?

So I finally gathered up all my courage into a tiny bundle and made an appointment with the "jaw and facial surgeon". This is a profession which seems only to exist in France. In the UK I think the moniker would be dental surgeon...

So anyway. He looked at my x-ray and said "oh yes, they need to come out!". (That pic could actually be my x-ray, except all four of them are like that sideways one, and they are a thousand times bigger.) He looked on his schedule and said "March 5 at 2pm?" and then he charged me 40 euros (I think I made a career-choice error) and left me to sort out the paperwork with his secretary.

All of which means I'm having all four of my squinty and wrong-way-round wisdom teeth removed in a marathon (ah-hem) 30-minute operation on March 5 (which also happens to be Super nephew's birthday, he'll be 2). I have a ten-thousand page medical questionnaire to fill out before seeing the anaesthetist. It has questions like "Do you drink alcohol frequently?" (well, define frequently) and "Do you do any sport?" (yerrrsssss. Sort of). I'm a little bit scaredy to tell the truth.

Still, a diet of yoghurt and er, yoghurt for a few days after the op won't do my hips any harm!